Shanghai Fashion Week follows the official fashion cycle, coming right after Paris each season. From diaphanous fabrics and open-work materials to the shirring and slashing that has redefined sexy in the post-pandemic era, the spring 2024 trends that we saw in Europe were similarly present at China’s tentpole Fashion Week. What sets many of Shanghai’s designers apart is their distinct take on Eastern elegance, be it via fabrics unique to the region or proportions that play on traditional dress. It not only differentiates their collections, but makes their aesthetic prime for global fascination.
With over 13 official showrooms hosting well over 400 brands, there were a lot of designers to see across Shanghai Fashion Week. Here, find a curated list of the top new talent in Shanghai.
Ao Yes
Founded in 2022 by Austin Wang, a former fashion editor at Vogue China, and Yangson Liu, a graduate from Tokyo’s prestigious Bunka Fashion College, Ao Yes places Eastern culture and aesthetics at its core. Wang and Liu describe their customers as “intellectuals with a sense of avant-garde.” Their spring 2024 collection features Chinese knotting details, hand-painted and jacquard florals, and silks and linens printed using Chusen, the traditional Japanese dyeing process. There’s a sense of ease to Wang and Liu’s silhouettes, most compellingly presented in their interpretation of the Chinese Tangzhuang, here in the shape of a jacket and pleated skirt connected as a loose sheath.
Chén Sifān
Chén Sifān graduated with an MFA in Fashion from Central Saint Martins earlier this year, and presented his debut collection this season in Shanghai, focused on expanding the soft side of masculinity, by utilizing “home-y fabrics” including curtain-like silks, embroidered linens, and lived-in silks. The subdued simplicity of the designs is offset but a particular focus on Chinese craft. Button-holes are created by tacking together two folded strips of fabric on a placket rather than by machine, buttons are often hand beaded flowers, and the facings and finishes that are oftentimes hidden in Western ready-to-wear are on display on shirting. Most telling of Sifān’s point of view is a generously draped cowl neck on a linen Mandarin jacket: “This style of jacket represents Chinese male leadership and power in China,” the designer said, “but with this collar it’s just softer and more fluid.”
Swaying/Knit
Sasha Huang launched Swaying/Knit after graduating from London’s Royal College of Art with an MA in Knitwear. Obsessed with the touch and feel of her materials, she takes a light, considered approach to creation. For spring, she expanded her assortment into wovens, enhancing her intricate knits with slinky silk separates and raw linen tailoring. Swaying/Knit exists in a compelling space between Eastern craft and contemporary fashion.
Assignments
Ruoyi Hou is only a couple of seasons in at Assignments. She started the label to explore the purity of making clothes, and uses what she describes as high-quality sustainable fabrics—linens, cottons, and raw and finished silks. Her hand is undeniably romantic and feminine, as evidenced by the intricate but not overworked shirring and draping in her spring collection. Titled “Dolce Far Niente,” which translates as the “beauty of doing nothing,” the collection evokes the beauty of idleness with light, gossamer fabrics that are as fluid weightless as her cutting.
Osmos
Steven Oo is a Myanmar-born Chinese-American designer. Now based in Shanghai, he spent his high school and college years in California, graduating from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco with a Masters in Fashion Knitwear Design before stints at BCGB Max Azria and Antrhopologie. He launched his collection in New York during the fall 2010 season then started a knitwear production and consultancy firm in LA, so he brings over a decade of experience to Osmos. Novelty knitwear is having a moment in Shanghai, and this designer is inarguably its leading exponent.
Ponder.er
Hong Kong-based Alex Po and Derek Cheng founded Ponder.er in 2019 with a commitment to subverting gender and “inviting wearers to experiment and explore their identities.” Their style is fluid with revealing, form-fitting cuts, best exemplified in a spring 2024 collection with conspicuous denim manipulations and skimpy knitwear—and sometimes a combination of both. Po and Cheng’s crochet knotting details are distinctive, but the charm of Ponder.er is the designers’ sexy POV for him, her, and them all the same.
Ya Yi
Yayi Chen studied at Parsons and worked at Thom Browne and The Row before launching her label last year in New York via the CFDA’s Runway 360 platform. She’s now based in Shanghai, but her perspective is undeniably international. Her spring collection offers a New Yorker’s lens on Chinese and Spanish elegance, with deftly draped silky frocks and blouses that hold their own next to sharp tailoring punctuated by flamenco-like fringe.
